Jumping on the IoT bandwagon
The term 'Internet of Things' - or IoT - has been around for a couple of years now; the first time <i>New Electronics</i> used it was in 2011 when reporting on a £5million investment by the Technology Strategy Board to get things started in the UK.
The IoT is an evolution of M2M - Machine to Machine communications- which first saw the light of day in the latter stages of the 1990s. Many struggled to understand the concept then, and it's often the same case today with the IoT.
Where M2M had a long gestation period, the IoT has developed a life of its own and it's now hard to find instances where it isn't mentioned. It's a good 'buzz phrase' in that it is pretty much all encompassing. Because the internet underpins our world, a term involving the word 'internet' can be accepted readily. And that has engendered more than a small amount of 'bandwagon jumping'.
The more cynical amongst us envisage marketing departments frantically creating stickers for their products saying 'IoT compatible'.
